Background Study on ν[sub e] Appearance in a Very Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiments with a Large Water Cherenkov Detector

Abstract

There is a growing interest in very long baseline neutrino oscillation as a machinery to probe the last three unmeasured neutrino oscillation parameters: the mixing angle sin2 2θ13, the possible CP violating phase δCP and the mass hierarchy, namely, the sign of Δm322. Despite very successful performance of water Cherenkov detectors such as IMB, Kamiokande and Super‐Kamiokande, it is not well known that this detector technology can also provide required performance for a next generation of long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. This report presents the latest effort to prove that a large water Cherenkov detector will be adequate for rather difficult task of detecting νes from the neutrino oscillation νμ→νe efficiently over a potentially large background from γs from π0 produced by neutral current.